Did you fire up Spotify today and notice a chunk of Victory Records’ catalog went missing? Well, some back-room dealings between the two companies seem to be at play, and a massive amount of hardcore and metal releases have vanished, some of which aren’t even associated with Victory Records.
From a press release from Victory Records:
Victory Records’ catalog of music was pulled from Spotify last night as a result of Spotify not properly paying publishing revenues due to Victory Records’ artists in blatant violation of US Copyright laws. Spotify also pulled down a very large number of albums that Victory is not the publisher for proving that their internal systems are inadequate. We asked that our catalog not be pulled, that we would amicably work with Spotify, and they haphazardly removed our content regardless. 53,000,000 streams, as per Spotify’s statements, were identified with no publishing royalties being paid by Spotify.
The situation seems to stem from a new agreement from Spotify, which Victory Records has refused to sign.
We could not sign said document for a variety of reasons, most importantly, that it would put us in direct violation of our agreement with Audiam (www.audiam.com). Spotify knows we are in business with Audiam and were essentially asking us to breach/ignore that agreement. The issue of nonpayment for songwriters and composers is a widespread problem and not exclusive to Victory Records’ artists. We understand your frustration with not being able to listen to the music you enjoy (and most pay for via subscription).
While Spotify says metal fans are the most loyal, it doesn’t like the streaming music service will win over listeners if this spreads to other metal labels.
